On Mechanical Behavior of Elastomeric Networks: Effects of Random Porous Microstructure

Abstract

An assumption in micromechanical analysis of polymers is that the constitutive polymeric media is non-porous. Non-porosity of media, however, is merely a simplifying assumption. In this paper, we neglect this assumption and studied polymer networks with a different porosity volume fraction. A random morphology description function is used to model the porosity of the network and nonlinear finite element analyses are conducted to perform structural analysis of porous polymer networks. The results show that the porosity effect is significant in mechanical behavior of polymer networks and may increase the maximum Von-Mises stress drastically.